Cressida Cowell_How to Train Your Dragon_04

by How to Cheat a Dragon's Curse

  Down below they could hear the roar of the Hysterics, the loudest of all being Norbert the Nutjob shouting, "MY VEGETABLE! THEY'VE GOT MY VEGETABLE!"

  The Hysterics were already stampeding toward the door, in pursuit.

  Hiccup knew they hadn't a hope of getting away on foot, and they didn't have time to find their skis again.

  In such situations, being tough is not necessarily the way to stay alive, because however tough you are, if there are five hundred Hysterics on skis and only FOUR of you, you are not going to win the battle.

  What you need in THIS kind of situation is a Clever Idea, and luckily Hiccup was good at Clever Ideas.

  Hiccup put the food tray down on the roof and sat on it.

  "Come on, Camicazi, you sit behind me," ordered Hiccup.

  "Oh, goody," said Camicazi, her eyes lighting up.

  The roof of the Great Hall hung slightly over the village walls. From there a steep slope ran all the way down to the harbor.

  So when the Hysterics poured out of the doors of the Great Hall in a shouting, angry river they had an excellent view of Camicazi and Hiccup tobogganing down the roof and sailing over the walls of the village on board one of their silver food trays.

  "AAAAIEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!" screamed Hiccup and Camicazi as they soared through the air.

  By some miracle they landed the right way up on the slope below.

  And then the lightning descent began.

  Take it from me, there is nothing on earth that moves faster than two children going down a practically vertical slope on a highly polished silver food tray.

  Hiccup had sledded before, but never on a hill so steep that it was practically a cliff. And in fact the exact descent that they made has now become an annual competition on Hysteria. It is known as the Potato-Burglars' Run, and it follows the same route that Hiccup and Camicazi took, starting, as they did, on top of the roof of the Great Hall, and ending, less than two minutes later, in Hysteria Harbor.

  The Potato-Burglars' Run is the most dangerous toboggan run in the Inner Isles, and for those brave enough to try it, accidents are common.

  Hiccup and Camicazi were lucky not to break their necks. They screamed down that hillside, wildly out of control, yelling at the tops of their voices.

  One Eye and Toothless couldn't possibly keep up with them, for it was like trying to catch a speeding arrow.

  When they hit the ice of the harbor two bottom-bruising, hair-raising, eye-popping minutes later, they were going so fast that they wildly overshot the sleigh they had left there, and The Hopeful Puffin patiently waiting for their return.

  They scrambled off the food tray and raced toward the sleigh. One Eye came soaring down, and they hurriedly hitched him up and set him going at a brisk trot toward the Harbor Exit.

  "Oh my goodness," panted Camicazi, looking back up at the Hysterical Village, where the Great Hall was now a gigantic bonfire. "Those Hysterics are going to be SO CROSS."

  "My congratulations," growled One Eye to Hiccup, as he pulled them rapidly forward. "You are the first Human I have ever met who uses his brain and not just his museles."

  "If he really use his b -b-brain," complained Toothless, catching up and collapsing, exhausted, on the seat of the sleigh, "we not h ere in. the first p-p-place."

  In that very same instant, over the brow of the hill came the Hysterics.

  They had put their helmets on and they were on skis, howling the Hysterical Howl like a pack of speeding wolves. They were already shooting arrows in their direction, trying to hit the sleigh. But they were too late. Once their skis hit the ice they traveled for a while, and then came to a halt. Hiccup and Camicazi were nearly at the Harbor Exit by now, and the arrows shot by the Hysterics fell harmlessly on the ice.

  Looking over her shoulder at the furious Hysterics, Camicazi let out a whoop of joy as One Eye galloped out of Hysteria Harbor.

  "We made it!" she yelled.

  "We haven't made it yet" said Hiccup nervously. That sharp noise of cracking, like axes on a tree trunk, was even louder now that they were on the ice. And Hiccup was looking out for the Doomfang.

  "Here's the Vegetable," said Camicazi, handing Hiccup the Frozen Potato with the arrow stuck in it. "And this other thing I found in the casket -- I'm sorry, I shouldn't have taken it as well, but once you start burgling, it's difficult to stop."

  Hiccup took the Potato and the Other Thing, and stuffed them in his breast pocket, not really concentrating, for the great shadow of the Doomfang had appeared under the boat, and was following them under the ice.

  "If we can just get to the Open Sea before the ice cracks we'll be all right," muttered Hiccup to himself. "The Doomfang won't leave the Wrath of Thor. The Doomfang hasn't left the Wrath of Thor in fifteen years ..."

  The walls of the cliffs raced past them on either side. The Doomfang, dark and terrible, stretching out forever, swam slowly beneath them. And they reached the edge of the Open Sea without the ice cracking.

  "You see!" grinned Camicazi. "We did it!"

  15. THEY MIGHT JUST MAKE IT, NOW

  It seemed like they had INDEED done it, as they burst into the Open Sea, One Eye pulling into that Great White Wilderness at terrific speed, the Wrath of Thor left behind them, the potato safely in Hiccup's breast pocket, and Berk only a three-hour sleigh ride away.

  And then everything went wrong.

  "What's th-th-that???" stammered Toothless, pointing with one wing to a shape on the ice behind them, coming closer by the second.

  That was an enormous, leaping Driver Dragon, far bigger and faster than One Eye, pulling a gigantic sleigh with one man in it. A very cross man, with an arrow wound in his bottom, a lump on his head, chewed-off mustaches, and a double-headed axe in one hand.

  In fact it was Norbert the Nutjob.

  Before Hiccup had time to think, Norbert was upon them.

  His sleigh drew alongside the galloping One Eye. And then he reached over, and with one blow of his axe, he cut the reins and tackle attaching One Eye to the sleigh.

  One Eye bounded on, but the sleigh, and The Hopeful Puffin behind it, came to a shuddering halt.

  "Oh, suffering scallops" moaned Hiccup.

  There they were, as still as a stone, in the middle of a Great White Desert that stretched for miles and miles and miles. In front of them, Norbert the Nutjob was pulling on his Saber-Tooth's reins to wheel his sleigh around for the attack. Below them was the Doomfang. For the first time in fifteen years, the Doomfang had left the Wrath of Thor.

  It, too, had stopped when the sleigh stopped. In fact the sleigh had come to rest right in the center of its terrible green eye, as if it were a target.

  And a target it was, for Norbert the Nutjob. Norbert leaped into their sleigh, tall and terrible and COMPLETELY CRAZY.

  "AHA!" roared Norbert the Nutjob, his tic dancing for pure horrible murderous joy. "I'VE CAUGHT YOU, YOU REVOLTING LITTLE BLOND ASSASSIN! AND NOW I SHALL TEACH YOU NOT TO HIT PEOPLE OH THE HEAD WITH THEIR OWN VEGETABLE!"

  Norbert the Nutjob raised his axe over Camicazi, and he was about to bring it down, when Hiccup said loudly, "I wouldn't do that, Norbert."

  Hiccup felt in his breast pocket, and drew out the potato with the arrow still stuck in it. It was warmer this morning, and the potato, snuggled down the front of Hiccup's furry waistcoat, was no longer frozen.

  Norbert glanced at Hiccup, and then gasped in astonishment, as right in front of Norbert's eyes ...

  ... HICCUP PULLED THE ARROW OUT OF THE POTATO.

  For as Hiccup had suggested earlier to Norbert, the arrow slid out perfectly easily now that the potato had defrosted.

  Hiccup pushed it in and out of the potato several times just to drive the point home. Norbert the Nutjob dropped his axe.

  "My father's Prophecy!" screamed Norbert the Nutjob, his head in his hands. "I don't believe it.... It can't be true! You ... you revolting little Hooligan Vegetable-Burglar ... you ... are the Chosen One? ... You will lift the Curse and rid us of
the Doomfang ... ?"

  Hiccup nodded solemnly, thinking, nutty as a fruitcake.

  At that very moment, the sun came over the horizon...Rays of sunlight bounced off the snow and ice all around them, and off the Doomfang's Great Green Eye and dazzled Hiccup, so that he had to fling up an elbow to shield himself from the glare.

  A sound like a million whips rang out, or a trillion axe blows, or a thousand of Thor's thunderbolts rolled into one.

  The ice cracked from side to side.

  16. THE DOOMFANG

  A great jagged split appeared in the white frozen sea, a split that ran all the way from the Outcast Lands to the north, down to the Bog-Burglar islands in the south.

  The world broke open like a big white egg.

  "Aaaaaargh!" screamed Hiccup. "Quick! Get into The Hopeful Puffin!"

  Norbert the Nutjob, Camicazi, and Hiccup bolted out of the sleigh, and leaped into the little boat, the ice giving way beneath their feet.

  "LET DOWN THE SAIL!" screamed Hiccup, cutting the rope tying the boat to the sleigh.

  The sail flopped down and the wind caught it, sending it billowing outward like a plump cushion. There was another enormous CRACK! and the ice in the Sullen Sea splintered into millions of tiny pieces.

  The sleigh slipped gently into the grey-green water and was seen no more, and The Hopeful Puffin was afloat.

  Through the jagged jigsaw of ice, between them and the Isle of Berk on the horizon, up rose the Doomfang.

  It reared out of the sea, showering The Hopeful Puffin with water and shards of ice, telescoping upward to its immense height, which was impossibly, RIDICULOUSLY high, blotting out the newly risen sun.

  The SOUND it made was unutterably awful, a sadness so extreme it made you want to weep yourself, a sound that crept up the spine like spiders' feet, and scuttled over the scalp, sending each individual hair on Hiccup's head prickling upward like the spines on a hedgehog. It was the glossy black of a gigantic, muscly panther, and when it opened its awful Cavern jaws to roar, its serrated teeth were as green as its eyes, and the yellow frothy scum of its saliva steamed and smoked in the cold morning air.

  Indeed, its whole body seemed boiling hot, and like the flanks of a horse that has galloped for miles, great clouds of smoke rose up from its tremendous gleaming bulk and into the sky.

  "It's come for me ..., " moaned Norbert the Nutjob, in a tremble of fear.

  "No, it hasn't," said Hiccup. "It's come for ME."

  And the Doomfang did seem to be looking directly down at Hiccup.

  It was as if Hiccup had always known that this was going to happen, that somehow he was never going to get in and out of Hysteria without meeting the Doomfang face-to-face.

  "Don't look, into its eyes," warned One Eye.

  You should never look into a dragon's eyes. But in this case it was difficult not to -- they were so large and so close, like a couple of green suns. Hiccup was hypnotized for a moment, and his head spun so that he nearly lost his balance and dropped off the boat.

  "What do you WANT?" Hiccup yelled desperately in Dragonese.

  The Dragon opened its great mouth and tried to speak. But all that came out was a terrible unearthly howl of horror and SADNESS, and the foam dripped from its jaws in a revolting bubbly waterfall. It tried again, and the terrible sound came out again, only louder.

  "What is it?" asked Hiccup.

  But the creature could not say, and its struggle to speak made it angry, and it began shooting out with its blue flames, nearer and nearer to Hiccup. "What does it want me to do?" asked Hiccup frantically.

  "We're done for," despaired Norbert, wringing his hands.

  Camicazi patted the moaning Norbert soothingly on the back. "We'll be all right," she repeated over and over again, "we always are, Thor only knows how.... Hiccup'll have a Cunning Plan ..."

  "Oh that's right," remembered Norbert. "Of course! My father's Prophecy! He is the Chosen One, and he alone can rid us of the Doomfang!"

  But for once in his life, Hiccup did NOT have a Cunning Plan.

  "What do you want?" asked Hiccup again, more to himself, this time.

  The Doomfang made one last terrible attempt to communicate, coming out with a truly dreadful, garbled cacophony of noise, and then opened its jaws wide, sucking in its breath.

  Hiccup did not know what they had done for the creature to have it in for them.

  Perhaps it had gone crazy and turned into a Man-Eater? It had certainly killed Norbert's Papa, fifteen years ago, and was it now going to kill them too?

  Because now it was aiming directly for them, and Hiccup braced himself for the Monster to breathe out its flames and set the boat alight like a little barbecue. But what shot out of the creature's mouth was not a Terrible Burst of Fire, not the frozen flames that would have sent all three of them, and Toothless too, straight to Valhalla in a heroic bonfire.

  Curling and unfurling, quick and flexible as a gigantic muscly snake, out of the Doomfang's mouth came the Doomfang's TONGUE.

  One hundred meters long, pink and pulsing, the Doomfang's TONGUE sped straight to Hiccup's left hand, and the wriggling, squirming, revoltingly WET forked end of it burrowed its way into his palm and wrapped itself around the potato.

  Hiccup nearly dropped the potato there and then. But then he realized what the creature wanted.

  He dropped the arrow, and grabbed hold of the potato with both hands. The juices of the Doomfang's tongue foamed disgustingly over his hands.

  Hiccup p-u-1-l-e-d.

  The Doomfang p-u-1-l-e-d.

  There was only one potato, and both of them wanted it. Both of them NEEDED it. Desperately, Hiccup tried to get a better grip on the potato, slimy and greasy with the yucky bubbly saliva. He wasn't going to lose the quest, and Fishlegs's life, NOW, not when they were so close to home, not when the shadow of Berk was so tantalizingly near. He leaned right back, pulling with a might he never knew he had. But the Doomfang pulled too, and the chances of Hiccup, not more than fifty pounds, winning a tug of war against a Dragon numberless pounds heavier were very tiny indeed.

  Not im-POSSIBLE, but, let's face it, im-PROBABLE.

  Hiccup did not let go. He would never have let go. He would have stood there all day and all night, if he could have.

  But one fork of the Doomfang's tongue unpeeled Hiccup's desperate fingers, one by one, and the other fork gave a horrible squirm, and with a final terrible wrench, the Doomfang's tongue wrested the potato out of Hiccup's hands.

  As Hiccup fell backward into the bottom of the boat, he saw with more despair than he had ever felt before in his short adventurous life, the revolting tongue retreat with a flick as quick as a toad catching flies, back into the Doomfang's mouth. The jaws shut over it with awful finality.

  The Doomfang swallowed the Potato.

  The quest was over.

  The Potato was Gone.

  The quest was over.

  17. THE QUEST IS OVER

  Tears pouring down his face, Hiccup watched as the Doomfang threw back its head and screamed as loudly as if it had been shot with a gigantic spear.

  It sent a great sheet of freezing blue flame like an uphill waterfall shooting up into the sky. These flames shot so high they hit a small cloud up above, instantly freezing it, and turning it bright blue. And then, just like that, the Doomfang sank slowly beneath the waves, leaving nothing behind but a whirlpool of gigantic ripples, spreading wider and wider.

  They spread toward The Hopeful Puffin, rocking it violently up and down. They spread wider still, and lapped the shores of Hysteria itself, and carried on down the Wrath of Thor.

  Hiccup sat in the bottom of the boat, unable to believe that the Doomfang wouldn't rear up again, and maybe spit out the potato, or give it back in some way. But eventually the ripples got smaller and vanished entirely, and so too did Hiccup's last hope.

  This really was the end.

  The nearest potato was now thousands and thousands of miles away, in the great country to the west, k
nown as America to those who believe in such a place.

  "Issa. g-g-g-gone!" whispered Toothless in amazement.

  Up on the clifftops, the long line of watching, silent Hysterics began to shout: "THE DOOMFANG IS GONE! THE DOOMFANG IS GONE! HURRAH FOR THE WEIRD LITTLE RED-HAIRED BOY, THE DOOMFANG IS GONE!"

  And softly, and silently, snow as blue as Gobber the Belch's nose rained down from the frozen cloud above Hiccup's head.

  The blue snow rained down like confetti at a coronation, settling in Hiccup's hair, and on One Eye's white back, and in between Toothless's horns.

  "YOU are the Chosen One," said Norbert the Nutjob, still unable to believe it. "YOU have rid us of the Doomfang. YOU have lifted the Curse of Hysteria?"

  Hiccup was suddenly furiously angry.

  Not with Norbert, but with the gods.

  For six long months he had been longing for spring to come, praying to Thor for the ice to melt, and now, just when he and Camicazi had been through so much, and nearly achieved the impossible, just at precisely the wrong moment, Thor had made the ice crack and freed the Doomfang.

  And this ridiculous blue snow was just the icing on the cake. What was it Snotlout had said?

  The snow will turn as blue as Gobber the Reich's nose before YOU become the Chief of the Hairy Hooligan Tribe.

  The gods were laughing at him now, playing with him for their sport.

  Hiccup shook his fist at the Heavens.

  "I don't WANT to be the Chosen One!" he howled at the blue sky above. "I don't WANT to be the Chief of the Hairy Hooligan Tribe! I didn't WANT to lift Norbert's stupid Curse! I wanted to cheat the Curse on Fishlegs! All I want is my FRIEND ..."

  The silly blue snow took no notice, and rained down steadily from above.